Not buzzfeed

5 Innovative Solutions to Prison Overcrowding

Prison. We’ve all been there and everyone says the same thing: It’s too darn crowded in here!!! While the fatcats in Washington debate blah blah blah, it’s time that we the people took a stand and put in our two cents! Hey Mr. Hussein Obama! You wanna fix prisons? Well take a gander at my five proposals, any one of which is guaranteed to end prison overcrowding. But don’t do all five because then prisons would become so uncrowded that the prisoners would get lonely, sometimes going weeks at a time without seeing another human being. Eventually they would begin to doubt their own sanity, believing themselves to be the last human on earth. That would be weird!

1. Make bigger cells

Have you ever been in a room that was way too crowded? Remember how great it felt when some problem-solver knocked down one of the walls so that the room became bigger? The same principle applies to prisons. Not enough room in a cell for two guys? Knock down a wall! Oh, there’s two guys in the next cell so now there’s not enough room for four guys? Knock down another wall! And so on. Eventually you’re bound to run into a room with one or less guys in it (broom closet, janitor’s room, etc), at which point you can stop because you’ve successfully reduced the ratio of people in the cell vs. cell space. Pat yourself on the back, warden, you’re an innovator! Don’t tell them I told you to do it, though.

2. Convince prisoners that society itself is a prison, then let them out of real prison

The first instinct when you hear that prisons are too crowded is to just let all the prisoners out. No prisoners, no crowding, right? Technically yes, but it turns out that most prisoners are actually supposed to be in prison for the length of their sentence and just letting them all out would mess all that up. But what if they were still in prison even after their release? The key here is to start arresting college freshman who’ve taken an intro level philosophy class. Once they’re introduced to the general prison population, they’ll start spreading the idea that American capitalism is the real prison. When the regular prisoners have accepted this viewpoint, you can let them out since they know that even in comfort of their homes they can never truly be free.

3. Arrest smaller criminals

Have you seen a criminal lately? They’re huge! No wonder prisons are overcrowded with all these big guys getting locked up! Instead of arresting big people, the police should focus on smaller criminals; eventually, as the prison demographics shift to a smaller populace, more space will naturally be available. Now, I can already hear the naysayers, “But but but but that means that all the big criminals will be free to commit crimes!” Which is correct, but you’ll have to wait for my next article about how to stop crimes perpetrated by the big & tall for a resolution. This article is only about prison overcrowding. Please try to stay on topic.

2. Encourage hugging

Nowadays, prison guards are quick to break it up if two prisoners start hugging eachother. Ridiculous! When two people hug it can increase the available space around them by up to 130%! If two prisoners want to hug, I say let ‘em! Meanwhile, the rest of the prisoners will be free to luxuriate in the newly available floor space opened up. And if group hugs start to develop, the space savings increase astronomically. Try arresting people who are already Best Friends Forever, that way you’ve got a few guaranteed huggers to start the trend.

1. Defy the physical laws of the universe by limiting the rate of expansion of prisoner’s atoms while the rest of the universe continues expanding at a normal rate

We probably don’t have the technology for this one right now, but if kids would stop listening to that Justin Bieber garbage and playing with their Tamogotchis or whatever and start studying physics they would probably figure it out.

Important_Celeb is Executive Vice President of Prison Operations for The GEO Group